Saturday, September 20, 2008

Trucks In Vegas Need A Very Good Show

Suddenly, the Craftsman Truck Series is the target of all kinds of rumors. The sponsor is gone, Dodge factory support is gone and the field at Vegas (33) is the shortest field in over a decade.

One thing has been a constant during all the turmoil over the past several years. The NCTS has the best TV coverage in NASCAR. Rick Allen and Phil Parsons are easy to understand and Ray Dunlap and Adam Alexander on pit road treat everyone equally.

SPEED produces this coverage and there are no gimmicks, no hype and no fancy sets. No Tech Center, Infield Studio or Hollywood Hotel is on-site. When it comes to the Trucks, SPEED kicks it "old school" and the results have been solid.

This week in Vegas, Krista Voda will once again host The Set-Up pre-race show from the head of the starting grid. Beginning at 9PM, Voda will offer a recap of the wild action last week in Loudon both during and after the race. Driver Colin Braun and his parents will be the subject of one feature, and Voda will take the Truck Series' most popular driver Johnny Benson to an indoor skydiving center. That might be worth the price of admission alone.

Parsons and Allen are up next at 9:30PM with the call of the race. This short field needs to have a good race to get some national attention on a Saturday night in prime-time. The NCTS is at a crossroads, and some work needs to be done to get the series back into the NASCAR limelight.

This post will serve to host your comments about the NCTS on SPEED from Las Vegas. To add your TV-related comment, just click on the COMMENTS button below and follow the easy directions. The rules for posting are located on the right side of the main page. Thanks for taking the time to stop by.

I'm gonna have to tape this race, because I'm on the East Coast & my bedtime is coming up soon. But I can't wait to watch in the morn! No Mikey!! HUGE SMILE I will read here first before I watch tho-keep it real, folks! I do have on the Set-Up-Krista just rocks-what else can I say?

I have always enjoyed the truck series and have thought for some time that it offered the best racing of any of the main NASCAR series. I have always liked the Speed broadcasts because they are fun and you can tell that the announcers enjoy racing and nothingis scripted and like we have said before about Speed's coverage, less is definitely more.

Agreed sophia! It's a GREAT series and the guys work so hard to bring us a great show each week!

@JD--it's truly a shame that they only had 31 Pick 'em Ups and I saw in the other column that it would have been 28 if a few others didn't join the fun late :(. I hope this series survives, I really love them!

Poor Johnny B. :(. That was an *appropriate* use of the "where they stand now" graphics and information. So we know how it affects the Championship...and it looks like Grampa is now the leader by 9 points right now.

WOW. JD, ask and you shall receive. What a race! Another great job by Speed.

Was I the only one that found it strange that Doug Reichert still fulfilled his Speed Channel obligation tonight and forced Bill Davis to find a fill-in crew chief for the evening? I figured Speed would have let him out of his TV deal once he got that new job with Skinner, like other TV networks have done in similar instances in other sports.

I thought it was odd as well Stricklinfan...but I guess since this is the last non-companion race of the season and Mikey will be there AFAWK for the rest of them, that they dealt with it for this one race...but of course next year may be a different story?

Thanks for the info JD. I didn't have any problem with his performance in the booth by any means, I thought he did fine.

After seeing so many TV personalities leave the booth/studio for coaching, general managing, and occasionally playing jobs in other sports I guess I figured it was a general rule that TV networks never stand in the way of their talent "going back to where they came from" when a new opportunity arises.

Thanks for the info about Richert JD. I too found it weird that he was in the booth instead of on top of the pit box, but it seemed to work out ok. Doug did a good job of keeping most of his bias out his commentary. (You have to expect a little to come through.) Thanks to Doug for pointing out that the 23 crew guys were in the 5's pit at the end of the race.

And thanks to SPEED. Even though they could not cover practice and qualifying, they had the cameras there and were able to show the day Skinner was having before the race. Before I turned on the tv, I was wondering why Skinner had qualified only 3rd.